Guild Wars 2

This is my first take on making somethign like this for an other class, than Thief, but I think the Necromancer is currently a class, that could need more finetuning as the latest changes in my opinion clearly show that the balancing of this class was very one sided with way too much Boon Corrupts only. SO take this suggestions with grain of sal,t I don’t main Necromancer, its just a secondary class that I like to play currently the most.

Ill begin first with the Weapons, how I’d improve the Skills of the Necromancer, to make this clas in general more interesting to play first.
Its a redesign of many skills, with the intention also to bring some GW1 nostalgia back

Daggers

1) Necrosis > Vampiric Touch > Vile Touch
Your first attack deals damage and deals increased damage so more Conditions are on the target. If you attack a target with more than 4 Conditions, then does Necrosis let your enemy suffer on the new Condition “Disease”
Vampiric Touch after Necrosis deals Damage and lets you gain Life Forces,the Life Force Gain is double if the foe was under 50% health and then this Attack heals you also sa bit as you leech then also health with the dealt damage..
Vile Touch finishes the Combo String with an small AoE Dark Field that causes periodically Torment while standing inside of it that can be comboed for Life Leech Effects while its up

2) Life Siphon
Should also let you gain Life Force if you siphon from enemies that are under 50% health.

3) Dark Pact
Reduce the Cooldown Time from 25s to 20s. Reduce the Immobilize Duration from 3s to 1,5 seconds. Increase its range from 600 to 900 and make it a Ground Target Skill that can immobilize up to 5 Foes and which blinds also the foes, while you convert for every hit foe also one of your Conditions to the hit targets.
So if you have 5 Conditions on you and you hit 5 enemies with Dark Pact, you can clear your conditions with this skill directly and give them over to the kitten targets additionally to the blind and immobilize. However, this Skill comes with the Price of receiving self per hit Target after DP 5 Stacks of Vulnerability and Weakness. So if you hit 5, you end up with 25 Stacks of Vulnerability that you receive, after your initial conditions have been converted over to your foes.

4) Deathly Swarm > Swarm Shield
Enemy Number hit increased to 5. Transfers now only 1 Condition from you, but therefore converts 2 boons from targets to Conditions now.
Receives now a Sub Skill that can be activated for 2 seconds after using Deathly Swarm, commandign the swarm back to you to fly around you like a protective Shield for 5 seconds, gaining Protection and Retaliation for the duration while getting attacked leeches a bit of health from the enemy.

5) Enfeebling Blood
Inflict in a Ground Target AoE Bleedings and Weekness, while also convertign a Boon to a Condition

Scepter

1) Parasitic Bond > Atrophy > Price of Failure
Attack the Foe with a Curse of Parasitic Bonds, which deals directly no Damage, but lets you everytime per hit leech health when the foe attacks something, while the Bond Effect is up.
Atrophy the next curse causes Bleedings and Cripple.
Price of Failure is an damaging small AoE Blindness which becomes 5 stacks of Confusion if enemies miss their next attack while the Effect of price of Failure is still up

2) Grasping Dead
Cripple gets changed to Chill here. And instead of a one time AoE, it becomes a small durational aoE skill, which periodically causes bleedigns and chills per second for a duration of 3 seconds. So if you stand 3 seconds in there, you end up with 9 stacks of Bleeding for 10s and 6 seconds of Chill. Range reduced from 900 to 600

3) Feast of Corruption
Stays as it is.

Axe

1) Rending Strike > Spirit Claws > Unholy Feast
Practically the whole weapon in 1 AA, because its so massively underwhelming compared to everythign else the Necro has currently… and with better names.
Giving the Axe back two nostagic skills this way to improve it

2) Demonic Flesh
Gain Regeneration, Vigor and Resistance for 5 seconds for a while. Gain for every Boon on you also increased Toughness for 10s . Minions around you will gain Might, Quickness and Fury for 5s and if they get killed in that time, get replaced by a Hellhound for 20 seconds, a new fiery Minion which causes with its AA’s Burning and which absorbs Conditions from you to heal itself with them every 5 seconds.

3) Lifebane Strike
A Leap attack, which deals increased Damage so more Life Force you have and gains also increased Critical Chance plus gives you so more Life Force you have for the attack an increased Bonus to Ferocity, makign this attack even under a Condition build a fearsome direct damage cleaving leap attack, when you perform it with maximum Life Force. If you had Boons, you lose two Boons, but then causes this attack also Chill and Fear for 2 seconds and you evade all incoming attacks while performing the skill.

Focus

4) Reaper’s Touch
Should cause also Chill when hitting foes under 50% health

5) Spinal Shivers
Change the Chill here to Weakness and Torment with increased Torment Stacks so more Boons got removed

Warhorn

4) Wail of Doom
Reduce the Cooldown from 30 seconds to 20s and let it cause also Damage.
Increased Damage so nearer the enemy is to you that is so high, that a foe absolutely doesn’t want to stay in your face range if you could use this skill at any time.
Increase also the Range from 600 to 900
Wail of Doom deals also additional Damage so nearer you self are to death, making it the most effective to use when you enemy is directly near you while you are on the lowest health threshold for maximum damage making it the most optimal last resort attack that could safe your life. Rercharges 50% faster if you attack downed enemies with it or if you kill somebody with this skill.

5) Locust Swarm
Deals no Damage anymore to creatures/objects that you haven’t targeted to stop this skill finaly from reducing your run speed only because you accidently damaged something with it while running …
Damage increased by 100%, this skill was always way too weak…you barely feel any of the damage it does periodically…
Change the 15 seconds of Swiftness to a 10 seconds of Super Speed.

Staff (again bringing back some nostalgy here)

1) Rotting Flesh > Reckless Haste > Vampiric Swarm
Send ouf a line of sight plague wave that damages foes and causes diseases.
Followed by Reckless Haste, which causes hit targets for the next few seconds to gain every second stacks of Torment, while they have either Swiftness, Quickness or Regeneration and deals increased damage, if foes have none of these boons at the moment when beign hit by Reckless Haste. The Torment stacks quicker, if enemies have multiple of the boons that trigger the effect. Send then out a Vampiric Swarm that hits up to 5 targets and leeches Life Force from them. The gained Life Force gets then also converted into a Heal for you and your Minions which has a strong Healing Power factor with that it gets multiplied, so that high healign power makes this skill very effective.

2) Mark of Blood
A Mark Skill, which causes AoE Bleedings and lets you and your nearby allies gain Regeneration

3) Mark of Subversion
A Mark Skill, which removes from you and nearby allies Conditions when triggered, which converts the removed Conditions into Boons

4) Mark of Fury
A Mark Skill, which causes AoE Weakness and Vulnerability, while granting you and nearby allies for each hit foe Might and Fury. Gain also Quickness for 1 second for each enemy hit that was under 50% health at the moment

5) Reaper’s Mark
A Mark Skill, which causes AoE Chill and Poison when being triggered that grants Allies for a short while Resistance and Stability

Greatsword

1) Dusk Strike > Fading Twilight > Chilling Scythe
Make the AA Chain like 10-15% faster. Increase the Life Force Gain from Fading Twilight from 1 to 3%

2) Gravedigger
Reduce the animation time to 3/4s but increase the recharge tiem from 8 to 9s and reduce the Recharge from Instant Recharge to 50% increased recharge time when hittign downed foes with it. Increase its range from 170 to 230. Instant full recharge is just too OP on this Skill.

3) Death Spiral
Add some mobility to this skill. Make it a 450 leap that deals damage to all targets in line of sight.

4) Nightfall
Stays as it is

5) Grasping Darkness
Stays as it is

Disease
New Necromancer unique Condition – Disease.
When you suffer on Disease, it increases the Condition Durations of other physical Conditions as like Poison, Weakness, Vulnerability, Blindness and Cripple by 33%
While you suffer on Disease will spread these physical Conditions over to nearby targets. So practically due Disease work like a plague, as if you use Epidemic.

With the introduction of this Condition does get the Skill Epidemic removed and exchanged with a new Utility Skill under the Corruption Segment and replaced with the new Utility Skill that gets merged with Corrosive Poison Cloud to give the class two better new Utilties

Fetid Ground
Fetid Ground will cause a ground targeted pulsating Disease/Poison/Weakness Area that strengthens also Minions while they are standing in that area giving them Regeneration, Might and Fury.

Dark Aura
Gain a Dark Aura, which causes Life Leech and Vulnerability effects when being attacked while its up. Works as Stun Breaker and removes a Condition.
The Life Leech Effect is increased when you are bleeding or poisoned.

Next the Utility Skills:

Two Utilities have I written already up there., further on this point.

Corruptions:

• Dark Aura See above
• Fertid Ground

• Blood Is Power
  Reduce the Coldown from 30s to 15s
  Increase the the Bleeding Stacks for the Enemy and yourself to 4 Stacks of Bleeding with reduced durations, 15s for enemy, 5s for yourself.
  Increases for its duration now also the Healing Power from you and your allies by +250 at Max Level, so that Life Leeches, Regenerations and general Healings become better while under the effect of this Skill.
  This skill should become simply more oftenly useable therefore that it has a negative tradeback of inflicting damage to yourself, while buffign yourself and your allies.
  These changes make this skill then equally good to the other corruptions

• Corrupt Boons > Removed and replaced with Cacophony

• Cacophony
  Corrupt the Area around you and create a large Field Effect, that causes significant Damage to foes, whenever they use in range of that Field Effect a Skill of the following types: Shouts, Signets, Banners, Traps. The Damage is double effective, if the Skill was actually a Shout

Signets:

• Plague Signet > Functionally changed and renamed to Signet of Corruption

• Signet of Corruption
  Passive: Gain Endurance and Life Force whenever you receive Conditions and absorb every 3 seconds Conditions from your nearby allies.
  Active: Absorb up to 3 Conditions on you and turn them into Boons and receive per absorbed Condition some Health back. Works also as Stun Breaker.

• Signet of Vampirism (merge of Locust and Spite, the Healing Skill with that name gets changed)
  Passive: Increases Power and grants you Swiftness periodically every 5 seconds for 3 seconds duration. The Power Boost is under Shround stronger.
  Active: Leech health from up to 5 nearby targets. Gain additionally Regeneration and Fury if you leeched with this skill actually also from 5 targets

• Signet of Undeath Functionally changed
  Passive: Increases the maximum Health of your Minions by 50% and lets them attack 25% faster
  Active: Sacrifice your Minions to revive per sacrificed Minion 1 downed allied player.
  The Cooldown is reduced from 180 to 60, but gets for each revived player 5 seconds additionally Cooldown. So if you revive 5 players by sacrificing 5 Minions, then this skill will recharge for 90 seconds instead of 60
  If you use this skill while there is nobody to revive, then you will instantly max out your Life Force and activate your Shroud for sacrificing your Minions and gain per sacrificed Minion a stack of Might.

New

• Signet of Gravediggers
  Passive: Gain Toughness per Minion around you and receive healings whenever you summon a Minion, be it actively or out of a passive source
  Active: Summon two Gravelings that cause with their attacks torment and let you gain Life Force from their attacks.

Spectrals:

• Spectral Armor
  Gain Protection. Breaks Stuns and receive Life Force whenever you get hit.
  Increase the Cooldown to 60s, but remove the useless limitation of removign the Life Force gain effect when using Shrouds.. it lasts anyways only for 6 seconds.
  If players use skillfully this first before using Shrouds, they should profitate from their skillful combination andhave for those 6 seconds also some Life Force gain while being in shroud and receiving hits.

• Spectral Walk > Spectral Phase
  Gain Swiftness for 30 seconds. Works as Stun Breaker. While this Skill is active for its duration of 10 seconds will cost you the two Dodge Roles no Endurance and dodging leeches life from nearby foes. Turns into Spectral Phase, a teleportation back to the point where you activated Spectral Walk, but you teleport also up to two enemies with you to that spot, so that you can forcefully reposition them for example into a nice mine field of laid traps

• Spectral Wall
  Stays as it is

• Spectral Haunt Functionally changed and renamed Spectral Grasp
  Send out a Spiteful Spirit, which pulls a target enemy to you and chills it.
  No more Life Force gain, but the pulled to you target will get also immobilized now and the Spiteful Spirit that you send out counts as a practical damage immune Minion, which stays for 15 seconds and trys every 5 seconds to pull, chill and immobilize nearby enemies to you. Cooldown increased from 30s to kitten

Wells

• Well of Power
• Well of Suffering
• Well of Darkness
• Well of Corruption
  Basically stay all like they are, but get all their Cooldowns steamlined to 40s and their Durations all increased to streamlined 10s to make them more viable options compared to the other Utility Skills

Minions:

• Summon Bone Minions > Putrid Explosion
  Their number gets increased to 3 summoned Minions and their attacks cause now Cripple

• Summon Shadow Lurker > Rigor Mortis (Merged with Summon Bone Fiend, visuals changed to that of a Skelk Lurker)
  https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/dc/Veteran_Jungle_Skelk_Lurker.jpg/240px-Veteran_Jungle_Skelk_Lurker.jpg
  Summon a Minion, that blinds with his Attacks and tethers its shadow with its enemy when using Rigor Mortis, causing immobilization to itself and its target. The tethered enemy will receive meanwhile the same damage that the tethered Shadow Lurker received. Gets the Shadow Lurker killed while was tethered by Rigor Mortis to an enemy, then will this enemy receive some large damage and gets knocked down.

New

• Summon Bone Drake/ Bone Shark > Spoil Victor
  Summon a Bone Drake, which causes with its Breath Attacks AoE Poison, Weakness and Disease. Bone Sharks underwater cause line of sight vulnerability, weakness and bleedings with their Rush Attacks instead.
  When you activate Spoil Victor then you gain Resistance for 3 seconds and the target enemy will receive for the next 10 seconds always damage whenever the target enemy attacks someone with less health them him proportional to the gap of health between the low health person and the target enemy. means, so bigger the gap is, so deadlier will be the backlash damage you receiver under Spoil Victor per hit on the low health person, so that it will be wiser to stop attacking and search a target with more health while Spoil Victor is up. Minions don’t count to Spoil Victor, only Player Characters.

• Summon Flesh Reaver/ Flesh Piranhas > Suffering (Replacement for Flesh Wurm)
  Summon a Flesh Reaver/Flesh Piranhas whose attacks do leech life with that they heal themself and their master. If you sacrifice them with Suffering, then you teleport yourself to their location and cause at the spot an Enfeebling Blood Spell to cause AoE Bleedign and Weakness, while also converting a Boon to a Condition for hit enemies.

You might as well create a new class for all the changes you’re making here. You’re gutting everything and changing things that are completely fine, or that just need a slight numbers adjustment. Maybe it would work out to be balanced and I’m interested to know what would happen if they made sweeping changes to all the classes like this but I’m highly sceptical of that. Is this meant to be feedback on the class or a fan creation of how you think a necromancer should be, because in all honesty I think a lot of the changes you’ve made here are terrible if you leave the rest of the game as it is. You’re overbuffing certain skills and nerfing others into the ground. I like the ideas behind some of the changes though but I don’t see this as realistic. It was a good read none the less and I can tell a lot of effort has gone into it.

(Sorry to say and I’m assuming that English isn’t your first language but some sections are quite hard to read due to grammatical imperfections).

what are you smoking? also can i have some.
But congratulations you make the anet balance team seem quite good by comparison^^

@ Rirgul:

Like I said, I don’t main Necromancer, its just a Side Character that I like to play, so don’t take the concept too serious.

And yes, English isn’t my first language.
However, I don’t know if you have ever played GW1 before, or if you started directly with GW2.
If you played GW1 before, then you should recognize alot of known Skill Names here, that I tried to bring back with more or less fitting effects that would be similar on how the skills worked in GW1 or simply what I personally would expect in GW2 from a skill with such a name how it should work with todays more modern mechanics that weren’t possible in GW1

Just only number adjustments bring you nowhere to make a class more interestign and fun to play. For that you need to look only at what Anet did with the Thief lately, which was mostly only number adjustments. Did it make the Thief more interesting to play? Hell no. Made it them straight just more powerful? Yes
Is that effective? Yes, but also the absolute lazy way of balancing classes.

Sweeping Changes like this, when naturally the other Classes get also some to improve their Gameplay and make them more fun is what gives Class Builds some new fresh air.

To me was the Minion Master in GW1 always one of the most significant builds in GW1
But here in GW2 they are in my opinion not good enough, mostly due to the minions beign to weak, or in this case their skills being mostly all of the times too useless.

As you can see also, I didn’t make changes everywhere. Theres also a handful of skills, where I didn’t changed anything at all. This should show you also, that I don#t just make changes here blindly just for changing something.
I make changes only there, where I think they would be appropiate and would change the class to the positive, like for example the minor adjustings to the whole Well Utility Skills, which should provide all 10 seconds of duration for 40 seconds of cooldown.
Makes it simply better this way in my opinion, without changign here too much.

But there are naturally, like for every single other class also skills and mechanics, where some bigger changes could be good.
The Necromancer is no exception as it is a Class like all others, which has also certain Skills, that should be better merged maybe to provide new space for some overall more useful new skills and mechanics as replacements that can give the whole class then also alot of new Build Diversity and new Gameplay Options that maybe weren’t there before to make again the Class more interesting and fun to play.

You can’t say that I’m overbuffing something, as logn you haven’t seen these things first in action and tested them out, especially when all other classes naturally would get also some bigger changes..
Nerfing skills to the ground lol.. I please you..I nerfed not really much here at all, just only those things, which are at the moment already clearly overpowered, like for example an instant recharging Gravedigger Attack from the Reaper’s Gravesword, when you attack with it downed or low health targets under 50% health.

That is freaking overpowered, especially when you have stuff like quickness on you, when you reconsider how powerful this attack is by itself alone.

My focus here was mainly so far:
- To make Minion Masters a bit more useful.
- To remove useless skills and merge them with others to make space for some more useful new skills
- To bring back GW1 Nostalgia through old GW1 Necromancer Skills and Mechanics , that I’m missing here in GW2, including their number one unique mechanic they had there – the Disease Condition which would enable Anet to remove specific overpowered Condition Spead Mechanics and and rework them into Disease as a Condition, that spreads and enhances durations of physical negative conditions like a plague/pest from foe to foe that stand too near to each other.

However, in the end this thread should be nothing but just pure inspiration for Anet for when they make again balance changes in 3 months, like all threads of this kind are that.

Would you tell me please, which ideas here you liked exactly? Thank you.

Am I the only reaper the hates the scepter?

I don’t run condi builds, just pure berserker reaper, but when I tried a condi build, I absolutely hated the scepter.

JollyDoctor.5738:

Am I the only reaper the hates the scepter?

I don’t run condi builds, just pure berserker reaper, but when I tried a condi build, I absolutely hated the scepter.

you’re not the only one;
I’m trying to find a good tpvp build that doesnt rely on sceptre but also isnt just glass zerker. so far i’ve made a gs/staff necro that uses paladin/mercenary ammy and is traited for corruption on signets and blighters boon as well. idk its okay so far, wish there was more dps though.

terribly overpowered suggestions but i like hellhound idea and would like some sort of demonic flesh utility skill that makes us invuln for some time.

The whole point of Gravedigger is to spam below 50%. Anet changed the recharge to 80% reduction, during beta, and received such a backlash it forced them to change back to 100%. No one touches our Gravedigger.

I’d be ok with gravedigger not having cooldown reduction if they buffed it up and reduced aftercast.

Wow… the walls of text…

Allison The Strange.4519:

Wow… the walls of text…

Read that as well of text for a second. Gave me a silly idea too.

Well of Text (Elite)
Summon an unblockable well that pulse every second for five seconds. Enemies caught within the pulse will have their chat panel open. They must close the chat panel first or their skill inputs will be for chats.

Hilarity ensues.

JirdyBirdy.9120:

Allison The Strange.4519:

Wow… the walls of text…

Read that as well of text for a second. Gave me a silly idea too.

Well of Text (Elite)
Summon an unblockable well that pulse every second for five seconds. Enemies caught within the pulse will have their chat panel open. They must close the chat panel first or their skill inputs will be for chats.

Hilarity ensues.

Well of suffering rebinds all of target’s controls randomly with every pulse. Well of darkness turns monitor off. Well of corruption corrupts game files, forcing you to redownload them with every pulse

Let’s make necromancer literally impossible to play against :P